Thursday, December 21, 2017

For the last month or so, I've noted with sadness that the sun sets long before I make it home from work. The shorter days leave me with a sense of truncated prospects, and a barely flickering desire to fight against this dying light despite my growing restlessness. During this season, it is difficult to start projects at work, home, anywhere. The best we can do is plan and hope for success in the coming year.

For the Samhain tarot blog hop, we explored where we've been and where we're going. For Yule, we were to choose a card representing the past year and one to represent our hopes for the coming one. Because I feel I've already looked back over this year, I have chosen to a modified wish come true spread in order to look only toward the light and my hopes for the coming year.

Yule is a celebration of emergent light, and as such hope as well. Though the solstice falls on the longest night of the year, the days following creep longer and longer. As my wishes and hopes for 2018, The Sun appeared (literally). In this coming year, I want to make progress so measureless that the darkness behind me is completely obliterated. Lleu Llaw Gyffes overcame three curses placed by his mother, his wife's affair, and even an assassination attempt. From these trials, he emerges to rule Gwynedd skillfully.

I'm hoping for an ascension of my own in 2018, to emerge reborn into a brighter future. However, to make this a reality, the Page of Pentacles and Page of Wands indicate I may need to start at my roots. Part of what has repeatedly held me back from forward progress has been a lack of discipline and organization. When attempting to navigate my way through my daily tasks, road blocks have served as a stopping point for me. I give up quickly, or stall, overwhelmed and exhausted by the thought of yet another challenge. I have attributed these failures to other people who disrupt my flow, but if I can light my inner fire, I feel I can destroy the barriers in front of me. There's a narrative in my mind which recites anecdotes of how I used to be on top of the world, but now I'm not; however, this fictive account erases the amount of energy and passion I poured into each day. By starting over as a page, I can once again find that light source.

The realization of my hopes will ultimately lead me to become an unsung, but sought after master. The Three of Pentacles reveals that what stands between me and my hopes is only myself. It is virtually impossible to be highly sought after as a master of your trade if your skills and abilities are unsung. The only person not lauding my efforts is myself. I fail repeatedly to see what I've done, and allow myself to become discouraged at the recognition of a long road ahead to mastery of any trade. I have always been one to dub myself a forever student and eternal learner, but in that mindset I have lost sight of accepting my accomplishments as more than just a milestone on the path to greatness.

The light I need to scorch this mindset from my being hides somewhere in my own inner wildness where my wanderer lives. In youth, I escaped reality and found hope in the worlds created by authors who inspired me to create my own. The worlds I explored may have been an escape, but I would emerge from it invigorated and inspired to carry the hope I found into reality. The Horned One lives in a world connected to but apart from our own. In that world, he is master or slave. How he presents relies solely on how free he is allowed to roam. When he is suppressed, his wildness appears as dysfunction, but when allowed free to explore as the Three of Wands, his expression is healthy and liberating.

For this Yule, I must begin the process of sourcing my own inner light to bear into the world. Though the days will naturally extend without my light, the shadows cast on our world can only be obliterated through the millions of individual lights inside of us sparking into being. My resolution will be to start with mine.

This post is part of a series. Use the navigation to browse ahead or behind in the series, or visit the master list to go directly to a blogger. If you are a tarot reader with a blog and wish to join future hops, join our TarotBlogHop Facebook group.